The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham

Author:W. Somerset Maugham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Religion, Philosophy, Historical, classics
ISBN: 9781417725076
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1971-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

6 AFTER THAT WE SAW a good deal of Larry. For the next week he came to the apartment every day and for half an hour shut himself up with Gray in the library. It appeared that he wanted to persuade him—that was how he smilingly put it—out of having those shattering megrims, and Gray conceived a childlike trust in him. From the little Gray said I got the idea that he was trying besides to restore his broken confidence in himself. About ten days later Gray had another headache, and it so happened that Larry was not to come until the evening. It was not a very bad one, but Gray was so confident now in Larry’s odd power that he thought if Larry could be got hold of he could take it away in a few minutes. But neither I, whom Isabel called on the phone, nor they knew where he lived. When Larry at last came and relieved Gray of his pain, Gray asked him for his address so that in case of need he could summon him at once. Larry smiled.

“Call the American Express and leave a message. I’ll call them every morning.”

Isabel asked me later why Larry made a secret of his address. He had done that before and then it had turned out that he lived without any mystery in a third-rate hotel in the Latin Quarter.

“I haven’t a notion,” I said in answer. “I can only suggest something very fanciful and there’s probably nothing in it. It may be that some queer instinct urges him to carry over to his dwelling-place some privacy of his spirit.”

“What in God’s name d’you mean by that?” she cried irritably.

“Hasn’t it struck you that when he’s with us, easy as he is to get on with, friendly and sociable, one’s conscious of a sort of detachment in him, as though he weren’t giving all of himself, but withheld in some hidden part of his soul something, I don’t know what it is—a tension, a secret, an aspiration, a knowledge—that sets him apart?”

“I’ve known Larry all my life,” she said impatiently.

“Sometimes he reminds me of a great actor playing perfectly a part in a trumpery play. Like Eleanora Duse in La Locandiera.”

Isabel pondered over this for a moment.

“I suppose I know what you mean. One’s having fun, and one thinks he’s just like one of us, just like everybody else, and then suddenly you have the feeling that he’s escaped you like a smoke ring that you try to catch in your hands. What do you think it can be that makes him so queer?”

“Perhaps something so commonplace that one simply doesn’t notice it.”

“Such as?”

“Well, goodness, for instance.”

Isabel frowned.

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that. It gives me a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.”

“Or is it a little pain in the depth of your heart?”

Isabel gave me a long look as though she were trying to read my thoughts. She took a cigarette from the table beside her and, lighting it, leant back in her chair.

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